


Rules & Regulations

by mearcats



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bureaucracy, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Magical Nonsense, Talking Animals, Vampires, Witches, anthropomorphic cats are assholes, coconut water, lots of magical silliness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mearcats/pseuds/mearcats
Summary: Killian is a disgruntled vampire who just wants to drink his coconut water (sometimes with a little rum—okay, a lot of rum). He’s found his revenge, he gets a spot of violence now and then, but what’s he to do with eternity? Sounds dreadfully boring.Not if Emma has anything to do with it. She’s exasperated. She’s just a witch doing her best to maintain peace between different factions in the magical world after one of its de facto leaders bites the dust. Or gets bitten and turns to dust, whatever.Killian Jones may have killed Rumpelstiltskin, but that also means he has to take a place on the council.Naturally, they have to do a fair amount of collaborating, and it’s absolute bollocks. They hate each other. Even if Killian does privately think Emma has the most lovely golden locks, and Emma will never admit to how easy it is to get lost in those blue eyes (or red, if he goes all fangy).





	Rules & Regulations

**Author's Note:**

> I'm excited to post this, my fic for the Captain Swan Supernatural Summer. Originally, it was going to be a one-shot, but it's grown a bit. I anticipate 4 chapters, but we'll see!

_He was a vamp, she was a witch; can I make it any more obvious?_

 

 

He wasn’t a heathen.

 

Well, okay, he was, but that was just part and parcel of being a vampire.

 

At least vampires weren’t the soulless, lurking-in-the-night creatures of popular imagination. No, they had their souls. (Unless they’d sold it to the Devil, a demon, or witch, but any Tom, Dick, or Harry might do that.)

 

Killian was in possession of his soul, but he might well have lost his mind.

 

Emma Swan was driving him well and truly crazy.

 

He was just doing his best, doing what was required of him to fill the void on the Supernatural and Paranormal Beings and Creatures Council (S.P.B.C.C. for short, though it was still a mouthful) since he had killed Rumplestiltskin.

 

He was following the rules in a way he hadn’t since 1789, and it…chafed. If you were responsible for the death of a S.P.B.C.C. member, you had to make sure their people—or creatures, whatever--were still represented. As Rumplestiltskin was some unknown kind of imp who seemed unique in his essence in this world, there was no one left to represent, but his seat needed to be filled. Some had argued that Killian’s presence on the Council was just giving the vampires more than their share of voices, but that was rubbish.

 

For starters, Killian couldn’t stand the lot of them. They were old sticks in the mud, mostly traditionalists who went around wearing capes and talking about bloodlines. The others were Reform Vampires—poncy idiots who went on about better unliving through various serums and who were always on social media trying to manage perception of vampires in the non-magical world.

 

And for his part, Killian was content to reside somewhere between the two. He was here for some good, old-fashioned vengeance and violence, but one had to be practical as well. It was easier to come by coconut water than find someone’s blood to drink, even with the requisite sodium supplements he had to take. After all, leaving a swath of dead people tended to garner the wrong kind of attention.

 

And that was the other thing—he wanted to be left in peace to live his unlife, drinking his coconut water and from the occasional willing volunteer (gods, but he’d put on a few pounds during the Twilight craze).

 

He hadn’t wanted a position on the S.P.B.C.C., hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. But then Swan had descended from the sky like the terrifying bird of her namesake (he was disappointed to learn about the missed opportunity for a pun in her name, as she was in fact not a shapeshifter) and harangued him about “murdering” Rumplestiltskin and having to pay his dues.

 

Which meant sitting on that bloody council.

 

Okay, fine, he was a bit at loose ends these days. Having fulfilled his centuries-old grudge and finally offed His Glitteriness Rumplestiltskin might have left something of a void. And sure, sometimes he saw eternity stretching out before him like an unending circle of emptiness, but it was _fine_.

 

A voice cut through his musings and he jolted to attention. “Jones? Councilmember Jones? Killian Jones? _Captain Hook_? Do you have any fucking input for once, or are you too busy thinking about bloodbaths to pay attention to us today?” Emma Swan sounded cranky and irritable and a little like she was considering coming over and introducing a motion to punch him.

 

He smirked. “Sorry, love, I’m afraid you’ll have to repeat the initial question. I was rather dozing, as it is in fact daytime.”

 

“Not your love, Councilmember Jones. And for the love, come see me or Granny Lucas after the session,” she said, her golden hair cascading over her hands as she rubbed her temples in exasperation.

 

Maybe there _was_ still some fun to be had after all.

 

&&&

 

Emma was going to murder him. Killian Jones might technically be dead already, but she would happily test out different levels of deadness.

 

He was _impossible_.

 

She was just trying to keep this stupid council with its stupid acronyms and stupid councilmembers running smoothly.

 

She hadn’t wanted this job, this position. She just wanted to work on her spells and occasional potions, help some people, and pay her bills.

 

But no, she’d had to go and help people a little too well. Now it was Savior This and Savior That, all for breaking a measly curse and talking a witch queen off the ledge and reuniting her with her love.

 

She had been going about her life much as she had since she had accidentally teleported away from a crime scene (now _that_ was a tale) where an ex had left her literally and figuratively holding the bag. Emma certainly hadn’t intended the escape she’d made, but she could hardly complain, either. And she’d been curious about how she’d done it, to put it mildly.

 

A lot of internet searches, the fortunate discovery of a coven that met for a weekly book club at her local library, and maybe-not-coincidental of the discovery of a talking kitten named Henry later, she knew what she was—a witch.

 

Fast forward a few years, and she’d found a home of sorts up in Storybrooke, and the three of them had opened a little shop selling various magicks and magical items.

 

To her surprise, Emma had found she gravitated toward light magic, especially of the healing variety, though she was good with technological stuff too. And Henry, once he was grown, was very helpful. He still occasionally knocked over things on her work table, which could be problematic—he was a cat, after all—but his advice was usually sound.

 

She really hadn’t intended to get drawn into anything more than her perfectly satisfactory life. But then Ruby, werewolf, customer, and sometimes friend, had asked her for help. Unless someone stopped it, there would be a curse enacted.

 

Regina, Queen of Misthaven, had come to power 28 years before, after deposing the previous queen and her husband, cursing them to eternal sleep. Eternal sleep was eternal in the way that vampires were immortal; it could be interrupted—by death or the rupture of the curse—but would continue until something came along and meddled.

 

It seemed that becoming queen and cursing her former rival wasn’t enough for Regina, though. Her unhappiness increased, compounded by her magical subjects’ dislike and the distance of the other S.P.B.C.C. members kept from her. She had decided to enact a spell to doom them, all her subjects, to go back in time and live lives of medieval drudgery.

 

Ruby had no interest in that. To begin with, her girlfriend wouldn’t approve, and she would miss the whole voting thing. Aside from that, saying goodbye to Netflix and electricity was just unacceptable. And Ruby was far from the only concerned party.

 

Emma was stumped. After all, what could she do? She’d known she was a witch for a decade, and stronger people than her had attempted to do something.

 

Most people trying to deal with the situation, though, hadn’t had the benefit of being raised non-magically.

 

Sure, magic could solve a lot of problems (and create them just as easily, but that wasn’t the point). But sometimes? The best solution was good, old-fashioned, and non-magical. In this case, it meant using her investigative skills to find a dragon that had been hiding from the magical world and who was supposedly powerful enough to help.

 

Well, it turned out that the dragon was an ex-girlfriend of Regina’s, and reuniting the two of them had done wonders. Regina backed down from evil world domination and had even been amenable to the equally non-magical suggestion of therapy.

 

Maybe there was something to the whole love thing after all.

 

Once Regina had thawed a bit due to Maleficent’s calming presence, she had tried to break the curse of eternal sleep she had put on Queen Snow and King David...all to no avail. The only spells capable of waking them required a blood relative—a living, breathing, and awake one—and both of them were the only ones left from their families, their only child having disappeared as a baby (another unfortunate result of one of Regina’s spells).

 

So imagine Emma’s surprise, when, as Regina was attempting show Emma one of the spells that wasn’t working, Henry jumped on her—Emma, not Regina—and clawed her.

 

She scolded him, not noticing right away that blood was welling up from the gash he’d left on her hand. She didn’t notice when the blood dripped right in the pathway of the spell Regina was casting, or how her eyes widened.

 

Regina noticed, though. They all noticed when this spell, instead of doing nothing like the previous attempts, woke up Snow and David.

 

And that was how Emma learned that she was their long-lost child, the missing child of the queen and king.

 

It had been awkward, to be sure. Finding family you didn’t know you had, accompanied by the weight of royal expectation, took a lot to adjust to. That was to say nothing of having parents who looked the same age as Emma and had last interacted with the world in the ‘80s. (There had been a shoulder pads intervention, fortunately.)

 

It was...hard. After a life lived on her own and having grown up in the foster care system, Emma wasn’t exactly one for opening up and sharing. But seeing how hard Snow and David were trying to reach out to her, she was willing to try to meet them halfway.

 

After some negotiating with her parents, they had worked out that in light of Regina’s resignation (and she swore a blood oath to live peaceably with Maleficent all her days, but the fact remained that it left an open S.P.B.C.C. seat), Emma would stand in at the council meetings. And she didn’t have to wear nearly as many poofy robes and old-fashioned witches’ hats as her mother had originally wanted.

 

Her mother had originally been offered the position, but she had turned it down, citing a desire to catch up on everything she’d missed. To her parents’ glee, Emma accepted the seat when it was offered to her in her mother’s stead. Not only did it give her a way to connect with them, it gave her parents time to connect with each other and the world again, as a lot had changed over the past thirty years. That was a lot of Netflix to binge.

 

Honestly, it wasn’t the worst. Some days, Emma even enjoyed her work with the Supernatural and Paranormal Beings and Creatures Council. She had put a lot into it, and eventually she’d been elected Speaker for the council, which was pretty miraculous given the tensions between witches/warlocks and vampires.

 

It hadn’t taken Emma long in the supernatural world to learn about the longstanding enmity between her people and the vampires.

 

If the non-magical world was to be believed, the real beef was between werewolves and vampires. (But maybe that was the issue—the werewolves were content with the beef, while most vampires didn’t care for cow blood or other byproducts.)

 

In reality, it was trickier. Sure, there were some tensions between werewolves and vampires—there were between most of the different supernatural and paranormal groups and species—but they mostly got along. In fact, they often played emissary between the vampires and witches, as they had common sociopolitical aims with both.

 

Emma shook her head—she didn’t have time to get side-tracked musing over her own damn life story and the history of a low-grade feud between magical beings right now. She had council business to attend to.

 

Council business that, unfortunately, included Killian Jones.

 

She scowled. That vampire had been a pain in her ass since the first whisper of him she’d heard. He was just...ugh.

 

On some level, she could accept that in the magical world, he had a right to be on the council as the one who had defeated Rumplestiltskin. The magical world had a convoluted law that boiled down to stating that anyone who defeated another supernatural being in combat could—and should—assume their posts and responsibilities. As an American, she was appalled. It was a lot to take in and reconcile.

 

And that was to say nothing of the man—or man-pire, as _Angel_ would have said—himself. He didn’t want to be there, that was clear. He was obviously just there to avoid negative legal repercussions of having taken revenge on Rumplestiltskin (for what, Emma was fuzzy on the details). He didn’t much care for the other vampires _or_ anyone else there.

 

Unfortunately, that made him one hell of a swing vote. He was unpredictable and didn’t follow traditional vampire allegiances, which made his presence on the council...interesting.

 

Not that she was _interested_.

 

She held in a sigh. The council was trying to get some work done on a law that would regulate different supplement vendors and how they could market to supernatural and magical beings, but they were running into all kinds of issues with the different vendors.

 

Truthfully, Emma found it incredibly dull, but something had to be done to break up the gridlock, and Jones was one of the most likely to be able to swing the vote. It galled her, especially when he couldn’t put on his professional pants and be the grown-up he was. God, he had to be at least 250, so couldn’t he act like it?

 

She motioned Granny Lucas over. They approached him where he stood talking to one of the faeries, and Emma cleared her throat.

 

He turned around and smiled. “I was hoping it would be you, luv.”

 

&&&

 

Gods, but it was so delightful and delightfully easy to rile Swan. The way her cheeks flushed and her fist clenched...it did things to him.

 

He was bad man. Or vampire, whatever.

 

Quite frankly, Killian couldn’t care less about the whether one clan of gnomes or another received the bid or contract to produce supplements. He wasn’t even sure that’s what this session was about, but he knew it was something of that sort. Probably.

 

Even if he had paid attention, it was worth it to rile Emma. He would say she was delicious, but that had connotations he didn’t intend. He didn’t want to drain her, for Christ’s sake.

 

There was just something about the reddening of her skin that had him wanting to bite her...just not in a vampire way.

 

He’d had lovers since Milah died. It had been over two centuries, after all, and he wasn’t a monk. While he’d treated them with the respect due to them as people (or faeries or witches, etc.), none of those relationships had been particularly lengthy or meaningful to him.

 

And if he could seduce Emma, he didn’t figure she would be either, even if she was a spitfire. Hell, she kept him plenty interested as it was, and he’d only ever seen her remove her jacket once. (It had been to punch one of his fellow fanged ones on the council, and he’d loved every moment of it.)

 

Whatever transpired, it would be fun.

 

&&&

 

“Is something _funny_ , Hook? Are we entertaining enough for you?” Emma bit out.

 

She was tired. She wanted to go home and curl up in her chair, and have Henry come purr next to her. Or sass her and tell her to feed him, which was probably more likely. Either was better than this.

 

And then _this_ asshole whose vote mattered had to be the way he was.

 

She knew he hadn’t listened to her. It wasn’t her fault the minutiae of supernatural government was boring, and 142 other people had done okay with listening.

 

He wasn’t an idiot. He had survived a long-ass time. As a pirate for most of it, no less. And he’d killed Rumple-fucking-stiltskin. So he had to have a brain in there.

 

Which meant that his lack of listening was due to boredom, even if he had started smiling during the last bit of her speech—a distant, predatory thing that she knew had nothing to do with supplements.

 

Her head was pounding. She couldn’t afford to have a loose cannon on the council; she needed him to be invested.

 

“Look, Jones, what’s it going to take to get you to give a fuck?” she asked, shoulders slumped.

 

Granny looked at her in surprise. Killian did too, eyes widening before he pasted his signature smirk onto his face.

 

That stupid side of his mouth quirked up, and he bit his lip in a way Emma knew he knew was lascivious. Bastard. “Depends, luv, on what you’re willing to give.”

 

Granny snorted and said, “Well, I’ll let you two work this out between you,” and walked away.

 

Traitor.

 

She forced herself to roll her eyes. “Nothing you’re implying, buddy.”

 

“Me? Implying things? Swan, I would never say anything that has a double meaning,” he said, after a very fake and dramatic gasp.

 

“That’s because they have triple meanings,” she muttered under her breath.

 

“Sorry, what?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

 

She smiled innocently at him, “I said, we need to discuss your leanings. For the council.”

 

He gave her a long, considering look. “Dinner. Invite me over for dinner—” at this, he picked up her hand, turned it over, and pressed a lingering kiss to her wrist, “—and we can discuss whatever you’d like.”

 

Ignoring the burning where his lips had touched her skin, she pulled her hand away. “Seriously?”

 

“As the supplement discussions, luv.”

 

“ _Fine_. Come over at seven tomorrow. I’ll text you the directions,” Emma said, huffing.

 

He scratched behind his ear, looking uncharacteristically sheepish. “I...I actually don’t have a cell phone.”

 

“Uh, okay. Do you have a...landline?”

 

“I do. And email,” he blurted.

 

She gave a sigh of relief. “Okay, I’ll email you the address later.”

 

Thank god she didn’t have to actually talk on the phone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you like it, put a comment on it? <3


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